A Visit from the Prodigal Sister.
My sister Sue came to visit. We haven't seen each other for a long time. She's been holed up in another state far from home. Our Mother is currently in a health care center recovering from a fall a few weeks ago; ergo, my sister's visit.
It shouldn't take Mom getting hurt to bring her home. She left because she became involved with a man who is legally challenged. He can't seem to stay out of legal trouble. Okay, that is partly my opinion, but the fact he has been in prison...well, you know. It also doesn't help that he gets others, particularly her, into trouble, too.
I know I haven't totally minded her being so far away. She made a comment about my late wife which I didn't care for and was also unfounded. I might have had my differences about my wife, but you don't speak ill of the dead and I still love her. Even when she's not around anymore. This being said around Christmas.
Okay, I'm not very charitable about the clown she had her children by. I'm not happy about their relationship as I saw it as jealousy of my wife and myself having a life together. I saw it as a need to have what we had. When we had our first child she wound up getting pregnant. I do not even really know the situation with her significant other.
I think my sister thought she had to one up me to get our father's approval. She is the only girl and the middle child. She, I think, had to have his attention. To herself, if possible. I didn't personally feel I had to please Daddy. I was, by that time, a father myself. I was learning how wise Dad was. I was growing up, if not grown up. I was the oldest, tallest, and expected to be mature. Even when I didn't want to be.
Of course, I always felt my sister resented me, or my position as the oldest. I think she felt she was somehow in my shadow.(Does my hours of Psychology in college show?)I didn't feel I needed to have a seal of approval. I was trying to seize the day when I could be out on my own, to be my own man and have a home of my own. I wanted to make something of myself, not please my parents.
My sister, in this time, has been mostly incommunicado. We haven't been able to contact her. She has had to contact us, mostly by calling our mother from pay phones. We have had to meet her on neutral ground. Family DMZ, if you will. Well, it is her life. I have had too many calls from financial institutions looking for her because of defaulted loans, or from representitives of law enforcement to care much anymore.
As my grandmother used to say:"She is free, white, and twenty-one, and has made her bed...". There is much wisedom in grandmothers. Or, for that matter, Grandfathers.(I know whereof I speak.)My sister will have to answer for herself in the end. Life has gone on. Time has a way of leveling things out and putting things in perspective.
So, now she has come home for a visit. To see Mom. I don't much care for the company she keeps, but after all, she is my sister. I might not like the way she's done things, or what she's done, or said. We had dinner together. She had a chance to meet my new son-in-law, see my twin granddaughters, see Mom, and catch up with what's been going on with me.
I got to show off my certificate from my publisher that my book was being published. My seasonally short, and chemo induced haircut. I didn't pry too much into her life. I tried to refrain from disparaging remarks. I think we had a pleasant evening with Mom and our brother Steve, who had to bring her home from a neighboring state. I found out what some of her kids had been doing, especially my nephew Dustin. Of all her children he favors our side of the family the most.
Now that I'm half a century old I find whatever my sister's done, or is doing, no matter what happens the old Beatle song is true:"It ain't nothing to get hung about." In the end she's family and if nothing else I love my family. I don't want anything bad to happen to her and I want her to be happy. I can't make that happen for her, that is her problem, but I can love her and pray for her. I guess that's what big brothers are supposed to do anyway, right? Well, enough said. Semper Fi!Lee Zelhart
